Dennis Hart Interview

Analytics SEO Overview

Dennis Hart of Analytics SEO recently spoke at the Dallas/Ft. Worth Search Engine Marketing Association monthly meeting. We caught up with Dennis after his talk for a quick five question / five minute interview. We talked with Dennis about what’s new with Analytics SEO, how to connect, and where the company is going next. For more interviews and insights from the online marketing world, connect with DFWSEM on Facebook and Twitter.

Interview with Dennis Hart

James: This is James Loomstein with DFWSEM. I’m here with Dennis Hart, President of Analytics SEO. During your talk you spoke mostly about competitive intelligence and competitive SEO strategy. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do in your role at Analytics SEO?

Dennis: Sure, and thank you again for having me to Dallas to talk with DFWSEM. I’m actually helping to build the strategy for the US marketplace. I’m also a bit of a brand evangelist, and I’m helping build out the product development.

James: There are a lot of different tools to use in the space when it comes to SEO. Can you give us a list of your top go-to tools – not only within Analytics SEO, but what other tools outside of Analytics SEO that you feel do a very good job in the space? And how does Analytics SEO identify and evaluate tools as an organization?

Dennis: As I’ve mentioned in the presentation, we are attempting to be a very robust collection of tools in one singular platform. We use our own application for our own site. That said, there’s still going to be those outlier instances where we might actually also want to log in separately to SEM Rush or to Majestic SEO and of course even Google Analytics. We are also developing some new features based on the use of things like custom crawlers. So we’re actually enhancing the platform along those lines.

We also are not – purposely – a social sentiment engine; so for some of our social media work, we also will use other types of social tools as well. Moving forward, we’re continuing to incorporate some social metrics into our platform. So even though were not a social sentiment engine, we are actually incorporating social metrics as it relates to SEO.

James: Switching gears, what are your suggestions for small businesses or small agencies/consultants when it comes to selecting the right set of tools to use?

Dennis: Value. Evaluating the value proposition to make sure that you’re picking the right set of tools. I would say that many folks these days have fallen into the trap of signing up with a long list of tools. And don’t maybe don’t even realize how many times their credit card is getting charged for that long list of tools. If people see value in being able to consolidate those tools into one platform we’re a really good fit. I also think time value is a great indicator for evaluating SEO tools. If someone can save time by not having to log into and out of 10 to 15 to 20 different tools they would also save in that respect as well.

James: Last two questions: As Company President of Analytics SEO what do you see as the growing trends in the industry over the next 12 months?

Dennis: I think that SEOmoz’s recent play of switching to Moz is a pretty good indication that they’re very committed to inbound marketing. And we certainly understand that as well. We certainly agree that it is about content marketing. And as far as trends moving forward – Google tends to set the agenda for lots of people.

I would definitely say there’s more happening in local and we’ll continue to see more and more improvements to local search results. We’re going to see increased rates of “not provided” by Google, so fewer key words being reported to us on an ongoing basis. Then, of course, more social metrics, but social as it relates to SEO.

James: So for young people just starting off in this SEO space, what would you want audience members to learn as a key take-away from your presentation?

Dennis: To focus on the practical aspects of doing work. It’s very common to end up getting tied up into the data, trying to dig into reports and not really understanding what to do with the data. I would hope that if someone is evaluating our platform, they could quickly understand that we are really about providing actionable data. Its not what the data says, its what you do with the data next. Sort of a triage approach of what we found, what’s nice to have, and what’s actionable. We can help somebody put the dots a bit closer together so they can understand what they should be doing next to improve their cycles.

James: Dennis, thank you again for your time today. How can audience members find and connect with you?

Dennis: Our website is www.analyticsseo.com. Right on our home page we offer a free account. We also invite people to schedule a live demo with the platform as well. You can also read our blog at www.analyticsseo.com/blog.